


Blue Light Burning

by coldhope



Series: Seemann [7]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Body Horror, Drowning, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, blueblood conspiracy, pesterlogs, seadwellers, seemann
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:52:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <i>All the Blurs and Stains</i>, in the Seemannverse. Some time after Eridan's rescue, the shadowy cabal of blood nobility behind his kidnapping resumes activity. The thing about using the internet to conduct your secret business is that unless you are better than the best at hiding your activity, you really cannot guarantee anything at all. </p><p>Meanwhile Eridan Ampora has other, somewhat deeper, things on his mind.</p><p>
  <b>
    <span class="u">THIS FIC HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.</span>
  </b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is your fault, lionpyh. Your fault.

ultramarineAnalyst (UA) 000056 opened memo 117 112 100 97 116 101 on board Ymx1ZSBsaWdodCBidXJuaW5n.

azureInvestigatrix (AI) 005682 has joined memo.

indigoObserver (IO) 2b0057 has joined memo.

UA: Check in. Has anybody heard anything further from the inquiry into the loss of the RV Seaglaive.

AI: Our peOple are still trying tO get past the security interlOcks. we had sOme luck earlier this perigee when a careless user at the imperial transpOrtatiOn safety cOmmissiOn headquarters fOrgOt tO lOg Out prOperly and we were able tO access sOme preliminary nOtes, but they caught the hOle and changed their prOtOcOls befOre anything really useful came thrOugh.

IO: what i hear, theyre at the end of their funding period, seaglaive not top priority, compared to big high profile wreck six perigees ago,

UA: Keep at it. The Institute wants to know very much what happened. Naghra's work showed considerable promise but there are concerns that she overstepped authority in submitting for publication. Director Lazula mentioned a call from the editorial board of the Journal of Alternian Physiology.

IO: fucking scientists, think rules dont apply to them,

AI: we knOw abOut the jOurnal thing. we're in preparatiOn Of an Official reply tO the bOard placing blame fOr any and all ethical Oversights On naghra and her pOstdOc. rOgue dOctOrturer, nOt acting under Official auspices Of the institute, sO On.

UA: Good. Keep me posted. And for the love of god don't get cocky. We can't afford another security breach like that.

AI: yOu dOn't have tO tell me that. we are still lOOking fOr this "terribleAspects" individual. when we find them yOu'll be amOng the very first tO knOw.

UA: I expect nothing less of you.

ultramarineAnalyst (UA) closed memo.


	2. Chapter 2

partial message in machine code received from RV Seaglaive approx. 00:14 before LOS

_—message begins—_

9î, +»Ö‰ù‰√‰3‰‰!Ú tever happens they must not find Leviathan. cannot emphas f≤@µ†È⁄W gh. the entire project rests on that. if they ¿Mõ¿0áˇÍBô Lev \ÄÑ¿të8K n everyt ò&S†`ng we’ve w ùÀcb„P or is gone.

«D†Å*∞AÙ¡, od they’re breaking through the door—

PÎSSg©;®á™g®oT?§ lood traito Ä@zéB¶ ame your ancest

_—signal lost—_

_—transponder code invalid—_

_01100101 01101000 01100101 01101000 01100101 01101000 01100101 01101000 01100101_

~

UA: From what I can see. The individual on board the Seaglaive was able to identify an attacker within our blood spectrum. There is an ultramarine associated with the violetblood seadweller captured by the Seaglaive before its destruction. The violet was at one point in moirallegiance with the fuchsia fishtroll. Their circle of acquaintance includes the ultramarine as well as a cerulean and an indigo. Intelligence has so far been unable to detect whether the bluebloods other than the ultramarine were involved in the Seaglaive incident.

AI: hOnestly Once a trOll is sullied by quadranting with a lOwblOOd or a fish, they are hardly wOrthy Of the title blueblOOd.

IO: theyre just kids, dont know what the fuck, no lusus trains their wiggler proper these nights,

UA: The argument from ignorance cuts no frostcubes with me IO. Old enough to fight is old enough to know good blood from bad. When we find them that ultramarine is coming in with us. For counseling.

IO: aw man, counseling at the institute,

AI: a lOt Of trOlls wOuld give their right upper grasping appendage tO undergO training at the institute.

UA: And many yet will. Continue working on the partial transmission data. Director Lazula is planning to deliver a presentation on the Institute’s official stance. And further direction.

UA: Also change your passwords. It’s been a week. We must not get complacent.

IO: hell no, that would never do,

UA: Are you being disrespectful.

IO: now why, would i do a thing like that, when youre the obvious and logical leader, no disrespect meant,

UA: Well. All right then. Get on with it.

ultramarineAnalyst (UA) closed memo.

~

twinArmageddons (TA) opened memo on board 116 104 105 105 50 32 50 104 105 105 116 32 105 105 50 32 121 101 108 108 111 119 32 99 114 101 50 99 101 110 116 102 114 117 105 105 116 46

carcinoGeneticist (CG) joined memo.

centaursTesticle (CT) joined memo.

apocalypseArisen (AA) joined memo.

gallowsCalibrator (GC) joined memo.

arsenicCatnip (AC) joined memo.

TA: ok. before you a2k, kk, ye2 thii2 ii2 a 2ecure connectiion.  
TA: that 2aiid, let’2 keep iit quiick. anyone have anythiing two report?

GC: 1 DO  
GC: TH3R3 H4V3 B33N SOM3 1NT3R3ST1NG RUMORS GO1NG ROUND 4BOUT TH3 1NST1TUT3 FOR BLOOD STUD13S WH1CH 1S 4S 3V3RYBODY PR3TTY MUCH 4LR34DY KNOWS 4 FRONT FOR BLU3 SUPR3M4C1ST FUCKH34DS  
GC: 1 H4PP3N3D TO OV3RH34R 4 CONV3RS4T1ON 1 4BSOLUT3LY SHOULD NOT H4V3 B33N 4BL3 TO OV3RH34R  
GC: TH4NKS TO M1ST3R Z4HH4K 4ND H1S 1NV3NT1V3 4PPRO4CH TO TH3 G4TH3R1NG OF 3V1D3NC3!  
GC: 1T S33MS TH4T R3C3NT WORK M4D3 POSS1BL3 BY F1N4NC14L SUPPORT FROM TH3 1BS H4S P1NG3D TH3 1NST1TUT1ON4L R3V1SC3R4TOR14L BO4RDS F1N3LY TUN3D BULLSH1T R4D4R

CT: D --> You mean forced depersonalization and physical as well as mental torture is not within the allowable limits set by the IRB for test protocols  
CT: D --> Forgive my amazement

CG: WHOA, ZAHHAK. I THINK I ACTUALLY DETECTED THE TINGLING SENSATION OF A MINOR BURN THERE. I TAKE MY FUCKING SKULLDOME-DECORATION GARMENT OFF TO YOU.

TA: can we keep on track plea2e.

CT: D --> Of course  
CT: D --> I apologize, Miss Pyrope

GC: ...4R3 YOU SUR3 YOUR3 OK4Y 3QU1US?

CT: D --> Perfectly  
CT: D --> Please continue

GC: SO 4NYW4Y 4PP4R3NTLY TH1S ON3 JOURN4L GOT 4 M4NUSCR1PT SUBM1TT3D TH4T T4LK3D 4BOUT  
GC: UH  
GC: FORC3D D3P3RSON4L1Z4T1ON 4ND PHYS1C4L SL4SH M3NT4L TORTUR3  
GC: OF 4 S34TROLL  
GC: 1 W4S UN4BL3 TO H34R TH3 COMPL3T3 CONV3RS4T1ON BUT MY 1MPR3SS1ON W4S TH4T TH3Y COULDNT G3T 1N TOUCH W1TH TH3 4UTHORS OF TH3 P4P3R 4ND W3R3 GO1NG TO H1T UP TH3 1NST1TUT3 FOR BLOOD STUD13S TO F1GUR3 OUT WH4T TH3 H3LL TH3Y W3R3 UP TO

AA: that w0nt end well

CG: I ALMOST WANT TO BE THERE TO SEE THIS. ALMOST.

TA: thii2 ii2 of partiicular iintere2t giiven 2omethiing ii turned up whiile goiing back through my log2 of the attack.  
TA: hold on. copypa2tiing.  
TA: 9î, +»Ö‰ù‰√‰3‰‰!Ú tever happens they must not find Leviathan. cannot emphas f≤@µ†È⁄W gh. the entire project rests on that. if they ¿Mõ¿0áˇÍBô Lev \ÄÑ¿të8K n everyt ò&S†`ng we’ve w ùÀcb„P or is gone.  
TA: at that poiint ii got through two theiir maiin 2ecuriity core and jammed all theiir tran2mii22iion2, but a2 that coiinciided wiith eq and the re2t of the away team arriiviing and fuckiing theiir 2hiit up hard and fa2t and miinu2 lube, iit wa2 2omewhat of a moot poiint.  
TA: 2o ii've been lookiing for any other reference2 acro22 the net2 for thii2 leviiathan thiing. there'2 a bunch of lamea22 cultii2t 2tuff about 2ome great bea2t that dwelleth iin the va2ty deep2 or 2ome 2hiit but ii fiigure iif there wa2 one ff'2 lu2u2 already ate iit 2o we're cool.

CG: YOUR LOGIC NEVER FAILS TO STUN AND AMAZE, CAPTOR.

TA: biite me bulgerot.

CG: NO YOU.

GC: 1F 1 C4N 1NT3RRUPT TH3 HOT 4ND ST34MY H4T3FL1RT1NG FOR ON3 S3COND  
GC: D1D YOU F1ND 4NYTH1NG 3LS3 MR C4PTOR?

CT: D --> Leviathan  
CT: D --> The name is familiar  
CT: D --> I have heard the cultist version with the great beast, but it seems to me that I have come a% that name somewhere else as well

AC: :33 in one of your lusus's stories?

CT: D --> It's possible  
CT: D --> I need time to check through my library  
CT: D --> Nepeta  
CT: D --> Will you assist

AC: :33 of course!! i would be purrfectly happy to help!

TA: ok kiid2 we're comiing up on the end of the piing target phantom runtiime, 2huttiing the memo down iin forty 2econd2.

CG: FUCK. WHEN’S THE NEXT WINDOW?

TA: 2iix hour2 forty 2even 2econd2. ii'll 2et the memo two alert you guy2 when iit goe2 up.

CG: GOOD. THANKS. EQUIUS, NEPETA. LET ME KNOW HOW I CAN HELP, OKAY? SOLLUX, YOU’RE A NOOKMUNCH BUT YOU ARE A NOOKMUNCH WHO IS GOOD AT HIS GODDAMN CALLING.

AA: hes right  
AA: talk t0 y0u s00n everyb0dy

twinArmageddons (TA) banned carcinoGeneticist (CA) from memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) banned apocalypseArisen (AA) from memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) banned gallowsCalibrator (GC) from memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) banned centaursTesticle (CT) from memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) banned arsenicCatnip (AC) from memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) closed memo. 


	3. Chapter 3

Gold is more difficult to work with than steel, although it’s far softer: pure gold, the tawny-yellow stuff you can bend in your fingertips, the metal of his rings, won’t be strong enough for your purposes. You have a small furnace you use sometimes to cook gems for cutting lasers, and you have carefully calculated proportions and combinations of pure gold, platinum, palladium, and silver, and overday you have melted them together into an alloy that runs and slips like liquid fire as you pour it into the mold you have made. 

~

The rough work of grinding down the mold lines and the sprues from your casting is over quickly, but you refuse to hurry through the more delicate tasks of cleaning and polishing, chasing the metal with your tiniest chisel in curling lines like waves rolling in to shore. At the tip of the conical cup you have made you set a single perfect amethyst, clear and brilliant as frozen wine, and spiraling down around the sides, following those chased wave-lines, drops of amethyst and rose-quartz. Setting the tiny stones is fiddly work, you have to wear magnifying lenses and bend over for hours and it does things to your shoulders and back, but this is something that you absolutely have to do and do _right_. 

When it’s finished even you are pleased by its beauty. Eridan squeaks, and wraps himself around you and says a lot of extremely silly things, and then demands that you put it on. You have talked this over for ages, ever since you began to design the permanent horntip, and he insists that it is what he wants, he needs to know it’s secure and won’t ever come off or be lost; he wants it to be part of him always, and you think for him it takes the place of a matespritship ring, an outward and undeniable sign that he is yours. 

You still hate the thought of it, and this probably shows in your eyes. "Hey," he says, sitting on the bench as you begin to carefully clean the healed surface of his cut horn. "Hey. Eq. It’ll be over in a second, I’ve had fuckin horrible things done to me, this is flutterbeasts and frondfruit by comparison. Just...just get on with it, yeah?"

It is rare that he is the more rational of the two of you. You swallow and nod, and pick up the tiny tube of cement, drawing a bead all the way round his horn a quarter-inch back from the truncated tip. He makes a face--"that’s cold"--and you don’t say anything at all as you carefully, so carefully snug the golden cup down over the missing tip, seating it firmly against his horn, and before you can lose your nerve entirely you take your smallest chasing hammer and tap the tiny hooks around the base into his outer keratin.

It’s over in a second, just as he’d said, but that doesn’t make it okay; he’s trying not to flinch but he can’t help a little awful moan, and when you run your fingers around the join of the horn and the gold to check there are no gaps the tears in his eyes spill over. 

"Oh, God," you say and you sit down and tug him into your lap and hold him, hold him tight, as he trembles and fights for control. "Eridan. Eridan, my love, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry..."

"...shut up," he says into your neck. His voice is very small. "Stop being sorry, this is _good_ , this is just what I fuckin wanted, okay, it’s, it’s just _fine_ , you gigantic wiggler..."

You don’t let him go, holding him and stroking his hair, very careful of the horn. It’s been...different, since his ordeal. He’s spent almost all his time here in your hive, and you know very well the distance from the sea is eating at him terribly, the homesickness he can’t escape, and you know also that he no longer trusts the _Dualscar_ as a place of safety. That hurts you in particular--not only did they hurt him so badly physically, they took away his goddamned _home_ , they set him adrift: a seadweller afraid to live on the sea. You have lived quietly here with him, he’s done the cooking and you’ve worked on this horntip for him and you have loved one another slowly and gently through the long days. You have made him cry out your name in a note of such desperate sweetness it frightened you; he has taught you pleasure you hadn’t known existed.

And it’s not enough. None of it is enough, because until you find and stop the people who did this to Eridan Ampora, you are always going to feel as if your time together is borrowed and finite and stupid and _short._

He clings to you, the way he’s clung this whole time since you brought him home. "...I wanna see it," he says, at length, and that’s good, that’s all right, that’s your Eridan in there again. You kiss the top of his head and let him disentangle himself from your arms, reaching over for a mirror. 

It suits him. The violet of the amethyst at the tip is a faintly paler shade than his hair, but only faintly, and the little droplets of gems spiraling round to its base glitter like wine as he moves. The metal itself is almost iridescent, gold-silver, standing neatly out against the vivid brightness of his horn. He looks at himself for a long time, tilting his head this way and that, and reaches up hesitantly to run his fingers over it. His clawtips click over the metal and jewels.

"...it’s heavy," he says, after a while. You nod. 

"I know. I’m sorry, but you should stop noticing that after a night or so. Ideally you shouldn’t even be able to feel that it’s there."

"I want to, though," Eridan tells you, putting down the mirror and giving you the most earnest look he’s capable of: it makes his eyes look _huge_ and as always something in your chest turns over like a sounding whale. "I want to. Because it’s mine and you made it and I love you. I’m going to be playin with it the whole damn time. In public even."

"I understand that makes you go blind," you say, and he blinks and then laughs, actually laughs, the most lovely sound you’ve heard in nights. He laughs and leans in to kiss your forehead, and it’s as if somehow this little ornamentation has moved you forward, as if a stalled process is finally able to quit. 

You make him dinner, for a change, and you don’t even forget the pepper like you always do, and afterward it’s him who takes you to the couch and his hands that touch and hold and stroke you, his lips that drift heat over your skin, his voice that lifts you out of sated drowsiness when he has finally brought you to give yourself to him completely. 

"Eq," he says, very far away. You murble something and wrap more tightly round him. "Eq. I want to do it. I want to go after them."

You hug him so tight he squawks and protests, and bury your face in his hair, still logy with sex and sleep but so very, very happy: "Then so do I."

~

ultramarineAnalyst (UA) opened memo on board Ymx1ZSBsaWdodCBidXJuaW5n.

azureInvestigatrix (AI) has joined memo.

indigoObserver (IO) has joined memo.

AI: that was sOme speech the directOr gave.

UA: I have been monitoring the news media.  
UA: They are as expected prejudiced against the Institute and accuse the Director of bigotry.  
UA: We foresaw as much.

IO: saw that one comin, but seems to have worked, source at the journal says don’t have plans to push for full investigarrotation,

AI: gOOd. ua, i dO have sOme news tO repOrt. funding frOm Our private dOnOr came thrOugh fOr the next stage Of leviathan. as sOOn as the prOject leaders meet the next stage can be underway. i wOuld recOmmend the lOcatiOn Of the viOletblOOd be given high priOrity at this pOint, as the target is dOubtless nOt far frOm it.

UA: That is good news indeed. There are three aims at this point.

IO: yeah, finding the fishpailer, and the target, salvaging seaglaive, rulin the fuckin world,

UA: Please remember what we talked about. With regard to obscene language on the boards.

IO: whoops, sorry ua, shit just slips out, its an indigo thing

AI: it’s a cerulean thing tO want tO get On with it.

UA: It’s an ultramarine thing. To desire basic common courtesy and manners in discussions among blueblood colleagues.  
UA: AI have you had any success in tracing user terribleAspects.

AI: we fOllOwed the trace tO a greenblOOd living in a hivestem in the city whO had nO idea what we were talking abOut, we verified with mindstare. terribleAspects is gOOd at hiding their tracks, but we’re nOt gOing tO stOp until we find them.

UA: Good. That is the attitude I want to see. Glory to a higher future.

ultramarineAnalyst (UA) has closed memo.

 


	4. Chapter 4

- twinArmageddons (TA) began trolling caligulasAquarium (CA)! -

TA: hey ampora.  
TA: thii2 ii2 goiing two 2ound weiird but bear wiith me.  
TA: fiir2t let me ju2t get thii2 out of the way: ii hate everythiing about you. ii fiind you per2onally repugnant and al2o ii fuckiing dete2t your 2tupiid accent and the fii2h pun2 are not doiing you any favor2. you are the wor2t goddamn troll and ii am doiing thii2 not for any kiind of benevolent feeliing toward you per2onally. ii am doiing thii2 becau2e thii2 2hiit need2 two be done.  
TA: got iit? good.  
CA: wwell that wwas an amazingly awwkwward convversation opener  
CA: but hey  
CA: wwould be an act a sheer cruelty to leavve a troll hangin after he just poured out his innermost black feelins so candid an all  
CA: so wwhile im tempted to invvite you to suck my vvast heavvin bulge im just gonna say i hate you too sol  
CA: i hate you too  
CA: you are the ambulatory equivvalent a seabeast offal thats been sittin out for twwo wweeks in the bright season  
CA: only less fuckin articulate an wwell mannered  
CA: noww that wwe got that ovver wwith wwhat the fuck do you wwant  
TA: oh my fuckiing god 2top comiing on two me iit'2 embarra22iing a2 2hiit.  
TA: ii hate you platoniically. ok?  
CA: i knoww  
CA: this is wwhats called among civvilized trolls givvin you a hard time sol  
TA: ...waiit, 2hiit. ii can't beliieve thii2. eriidan ampora manage2 the tiiniie2t 2park of actual wiit.  
TA: brb faiintiing  
CA: k  
CA: wwhen youre done havvin the vvapors you wwant to tell me wwhat you actually wwant  
TA: yeah, ok. here'2 the deal. the 2adii2tiic grubfuck2 who diid that 2hiit two you obviiou2ly haven't had enough fun yet. they've been makiing a riight me22 of what they apparently thiink ii2 network 2ecuriity, though, and ii've been keepiing a couple eye2 on them.  
TA:  
TA: …  
TA: ampora you there?  
CA: yeah  
CA: go on  
TA: they apparently have 2ome biig plan on the horiizon. you ever heard of 2omethiing called leviiathan?  
CA: wwiggler story  
CA: big seadwwelling monster  
CA: pretty much gl’bgolyb  
CA: why  
TA: they 2eem two thiink iit'2 a plan of 2ome kiind. they're beiing cagey about iit but there'2 a biit of a tran2mii22iion ii iintercepted duriing the attack on theiir boat that 2aiid 2omethiing liike "they mu2t not know about leviiathan." not 2ure who "they" refer2 two.  
CA: makes no sense  
CA: their entire thing is to kill all seadwwellers  
CA: and yes im awware of the peculiarly fuckin ironic nature a that aim givven my owwn proclivvities  
CA: so wwhy wwould they name their stupid genocide project after a fictional seabeast  
CA: no  
CA: i get it  
CA: i knoww wwhy  
TA: 2eriiou2ly ed  
TA: are you okay?  
CA: no  
CA: fuck  
TA: what, what ii2 iit, what do you know?  
CA: evverythin  
TA: fuck, ed, 2top beiing cryptiic and tell me  
- caligulasAquarium (CA) ceased trolling twinArmageddons (TA)! -  
TA: fuck

~

You make it to the load gaper. Just. 

Equius materializes at some point while you’re sicking up everything you’ve ever eaten and ever will eat in some sort of horrible paradox space reacharound; you’re aware of him only as warm hands on your forehead, arms holding you, the rumble of his deep voice felt as well as heard as he says small useless things you don’t need to understand. 

Eventually when you seem to have settled down to the occasional hiccup and cough he asks you what’s wrong, did you eat something you shouldn’t, are you ill, and you shiver all over as if someone has filled all the interstices of your bones with ice. It makes him say something less than mannerly and gather you up in his lap, gross as you are, and stroke your hair. 

He has a particular way of doing it that always soothes you, and you’re aware of it working even while your mind is still spinning in dizzy horror. Slowly the touch does its work and takes the edge off the immediate reaction, and when he sees you’ve stopped flipping your shit--or slowed the speed of flipping at least--he washes your face for you and carries you out to the couch with its battered, comfortable heap of cushions and blankets. 

"I’m going to make you something to settle your digestive sac," he is saying, "and then I want to know what is going on, Eridan. You will tell me."

You nod, limp and wrung-out but undeniably grateful that he is a thing which exists. 

~

Equius Zahhak has hidden depths, which you have pointed out to him numerous times to make him groan from the oceanic pun. One of them is being able to come up with bizarre mysterious mixtures that make you feel better when you’re sick or hurt; you want to be able to do that yourself, it strikes you as a hell of a useful random ability, at least on a par with being able to shoot things you aim at and constantly look illegal levels of suave. This time it’s something light and hot and sort of effervescent, and you drink it down without question and wrap yourself up in him like a vast warm trollblanket. Here you feel safe, the way you don’t any more outside this hive; here you can think about what you realized when Captor told you about the bluebloods’ Leviathan without the horror knocking you sideways all over again. 

He goes very still once you start talking. You know this can’t be easy for him to hear, either, but he is doing it without question, the way he fought his own blood caste without question to save your scrawny purple ass. 

"--so Fef always sort of knew she had a shitload a responsibility, right? Keepin her lusus quiet is basically, you know, keepin us all alive. If Gl’bgolyb ever actually got ticked off enough to glub properly we are all so much fuckin multicolored paste." You look into the cup you’re holding in both hands. "The Condesce is in charge, right, fuckin empress, ultimate ruler a Alternia and its captive planetary colonies, but really when you get right down to it Gl’bgolyb is in control."

You think again how much, how _much_ has always been heaped on Fef’s delicate shoulders. How much she had no choice about, the way you did. You were a complete bulgeboil at times, weren’t you? 

"These nookrottin slimebeasts know that too, or at least they got some decent understandin a the situation. I bet it fuckin makes them retch knowin their entire existence depends on a goddamn seadwellin monster. I bet they pail themselves raw over the sheer concept a takin over and gettin rid of the thing they hate the most."

"Are you saying..." he starts, and stops, and starts again. "Are you saying they actually plan to _kill Ms. Peixes’ lusus?_ "

"Well, I was more kinda implyin they want to rid the planet a its shameful fishy secret and let blue supremacy reign over all in crazy splendor, but yeah, pretty much." His arms tighten around you. "So I’m bettin this Leviathan horseshit is some kinda weapon. Somethin they think has the power to take Gl’bgolyb out."

"Nothing has that power," he points out.

"Yeah. You know that and I know that but somehow these assholes missed the fuckin memo."

You wait for him to come to the logical conclusion of this train of thought, feeling oddly floaty, distant.

"They’re going to try, and fail, and then...Gl’bgolyb," he has some trouble with the consonants, but everybody does--"is going to be somewhat understandably annoyed."

"You might even say _peeved_." Your voice has a sort of hollow amused edge to it, as if you’re talking in a circus tent from which all the performers have long since vanished. 

"And then we’re all dead," he finishes, "you, me, the blueblood conspiracy, everyone on the planet will be dead."

"Yup."

" _Fuck_ ," says Equius, and reaches up to take off his shades. The blue in his irises is well advanced by now, mottled blue-grey like the sea at just the right angle, and the shadows under his eyes look bruised. You’re aware that you’re becoming rather illogically calm and dissociated right now; he must have put something in your fizzy gingery whatever it was. The thought of your impending doom is kind of uninteresting to countenance: yes, the world’s going to end, when did you ever really believe anything else was going to happen, when you get right down to it? Sooner or later something would slip, something would fail, something would jam, and then there would be only the onrushing awareness of the Vast Glub ablating away will and consciousness and mind, and then nothing at all. 

"Yes," you agree, and he looks down at you. 

"Eridan," he says. "Eridan, we have to stop them."

"Yes," you repeat. You know that too. Both of the endings are visible in your fuzzy mind, the one where you all die and the one where only some of you die. "Got to find their thing. Their weapon. Whatever it is."

"Captor can do that, I know he can, he’s been playing with these individuals for perigees now. We will find out where they are building it and then we will stop them."

"They probably have a lot more guys than us," you point out, logically. 

"Undoubtably."

"And they’ll be better armed."

"Indubitably."

"And you still want to...what, round up a group of us kids and go blow up their shit like in a movie?"

"Something along those lines, yes."

"I fuckin love you," you tell him, and grab his hair to pull him down into a not-entirely-sober kiss. 

~

- centaursTesticle (CT) began trolling twinArmageddons(TA)! -  
CT: D --> Captor  
CT: D --> I need to speak with you  
TA: fuck, eq, what ii2 up wiith ampora  
TA: ii wa2 talkiing two hiim about what we've been learniing and he went all quiiet and then 2iigned off  
CT: D --> He is resting  
CT: D --> He had a somewhat severe reaction to the subject you raised  
CT: D --> Understandably  
CT: D --> It is distressing to learn of the conspirators' plan  
TA: what the actual fuck are you talkiing about eq. what diid he 2ay. he wa2 liike "ii know everythiing" and then bam, offliine.  
CT: D --> Is this a secure connection  
TA: yes  
CT: D --> He believes  
CT: D --> And I am unable to dispute his logic  
CT: D --> That the blueb100ds intend to destroy Gl'bgolyb  
CT: D --> That "Leviathan" refers to the weapon or weapons they plan to employ  
CT: D --> And that unless they are prevented from achieving this aim  
CT: D --> Our shit and that of the entire planet is absolutely, comprehensively, and utterly fucked  
TA: oh.  
TA: fuck.  
TA: ...  
TA: diid he 2ay when?  
TA: never miind, ii'm on iit, watch for the next piing 2hadow memo  
TA: ii'm lookiing for everythiing there ii2 on leviiathan  
TA: are you goiing two tell kk or 2hould ii?  
CT: D --> I will take responsibility for notifying him  
CT: D --> And Captor  
CT: D --> Hurry  
- centaursTesticle (CT) ceased trolling twinArmageddons(TA)! -


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to rainbowbarnacle for beta-ing

- centaursTesticle (CT) began trolling carcinoGeneticist (CG)! -  
CT:D --> Vantas  
CT:D --> Something of critical importance has come up  
CT:D --> Read the attached file at your earliest convenience  
centaursTesticle (CT) sent the file "briefing.txt"  
CT:D --> I have every reason to believe this legitimate  
- centaursTesticle (CT) ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist (CG)! -

CG: WHAT  
CG: WHAT THE  
CG: ZAHHAK WHAT THE  
CG: FJDSKLADA;HFDHLADJHCSRLJ"HI'A

 

By the time Karkat bursts into Equius’ hive like a small nubby-horned artillery barrage you are mostly yourself again. Whatever he’d given you was wonderful but you’d really like to have some more of it and turn your brain off again: being clear-headed means you actually have to think about this shit, and that’s something you’ve been putting off.

“WHAT IN THE NAME OF SWEET MOTHER GRUB’S PEARLY GLISTENING SPHINCTERS IS GOING ON?” he demands, staring down at you as if this is all somehow your fault. You rub at your face and sit up on the couch and try to pull together some pretense of being in command of the situation. 

“You tell me,” you say. “Apparently you guys have been trackin these fuckwits for a while now. Sol said he’s watchin what they do online.”

“He _said_ you said they’re planning to basically murder the entire planet is what he said. There any reason you didn’t think to let us in on this little secret before now?”

“Because I didn’t fuckin know before now either.” You are not in the mood for Vantas right now. “I didn’t know until he told me about Leviathan. How long were you holdin on to that little nugget a information before you thought a tellin me?”

Karkat growls and rakes his hands through his hair, fisting them. He’s gone red with anger, which is actually okay, it’s when he goes pale that you gotta start looking for cover. He’s defused, however, by the arrival of your matesprit, who is leaning against the doorframe in a casually menacing sort of way. “We should have told you before,” he says, and you stare at him. 

“You knew about this too? What the _fuck_ , Equius. When were you gonna tell me you and the rest of these assholes were goin around comparin notes behind my back?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Karkat starts, a lot of the wind knocked out of him, but Equius cuts him off. 

“It was exactly like that, and I don’t really suppose the fact that we were doing it out of concern and care for you makes it any better. You’ve been...off, since it happened. Understandably. And we didn’t want to worry you, or...bring back terrible memories, but we wanted to keep our eyes out in case these people were planning to try something else.”

“Which they are.” Karkat, again. You flick a glance from him to Equius and back and press your closed eyes with the heels of your hands, pushing hard enough for glittering golden geometric scintilla to flash across your mind. 

“You didn’t want to worry me,” you repeat.

“We had agreed that we were going to tell you.”

“When? The one-sweep anniversary?” Anger, hot and sour as bile, rises in you, spills and stains all over your goddamn mind and worries and memories. You get off the couch, staring from one of them to the other. “I’m not fuckin _broken_ , Eq. You fixed my horn, remember? Shit is good as new. That’s what you do, you fuckin fix things. But you can’t do it by tiptoein around them and pretendin they weren’t broken in the first goddamn place, I can’t believe you, jesus _christ_.”

“--Eridan--”

“And _you_ ,” you round on Karkat, “what the scumgobbling fuck did _you_ think a all this? As our leader? Who’s in charge, you or Captor? Who the hell is supposed to be runnin this whatever we’re supposed to be?”

“ _Eridan_ \--”

“No, for once in your tiny shouty fucking life you will shut the fuck up and _listen_ for a change, Vantas.” You’re feeling a bit sick again with the force of your own anger, it feels like a fist inside you thrusting under your ribs, hot and foul and fierce and blister-corrosive. “I ain’t the same fucker I used to be before they stuck their probes in my gillslits. That asshole’s gone. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s just sleepin, who gives a globefondlin fuck, but oddly enough he seems to have taken a lot of his juvenile grubshittin ways with him. You notice how I ain’t even once, since Eq and I got together, come botherin Fef or for that matter Captor? You notice how right now I ain’t descendin into fuck-all-landdwellers bullshit rhetoric? How I have fuckin grown as a person through the trials and tribulations of havin my _god damn horn_ cut off and bein violated in a spectacular number a ways? No? Well, _take a look._ ”

You pause, panting. Karkat is staring at you as if you have perhaps turned into someone else entirely and he is working out whether he likes the new one better, or whether he ought to maybe consider running for it. 

“You’re right,” Equius says quietly from the doorway. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t tried to cuddle or shoosh or pet you, which is good: right now you think you’d probably throw him through the goddamn wall. He’s just standing there, arms folded, looking impassive, but you know him well enough to read the self-disgust in every line of his body, every tone of his voice. 

“I know I’m fuckin right. Yeah, I was a mess when you hauled me off that boat. I was a mess for a while after, _but I got better_. You know why I had Eq do this?” 

Karkat’s eyes are fixed on your golden horntip. 

“Because what happened to me was foul beyond all goddamn recognition but that shit _wasn’t my fault_ and I’m not shamed, not _damaged fuckin goods_ cause a it. And you tryin to ignore it, tryin to mewbeastfoot around me like I’m made a glass and I’ll shatter at any mention a the whole fuckin incident says _you think I am_.”

Behind you Equius makes a strangled terrible little noise in his throat and you think he’s making the vast mistake of coming over to try and touch you, but he stays where he is. Karkat’s eyes have gone wide, wide, and there’s the red beginning in them, a weird luster-haze over the grey. You’re breathing hard now and god, the bright fury is beginning to cool and curdle and coagulate into sick heaviness in your gut. 

“Don’t fuckin deny me my right to survive that shit,” you say, and you just sound so tired. “Don’t pretend it never happened. Just... _tell me_ things, will you, for fuck’s sake, I can’t deal with all this subterfuge and concealment and lies. There ain’t sufficient time left for that shit, for any of us.”

Oh, fuck, that haze isn’t his blood color seeping into his irises, that’s...

“...aw, shit, Kar, don’t fuckin cry, I can’t deal with that right now, okay?” You take a step over to him and reach out to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder, which turns out to have been a dumb move because he promptly flings his arms around you and bursts into proper tears. “--Fuck, stop it, I don’t...oh, goddamn, Kar, shoosh, how do you shoosh people, you’re the best at it....”

He’s sort of trying to say something in between gulping sobs but you totally can’t make anything of it and you just sort of stand there and pat his back and say stupid shit like “there, there” until he calms down. At some point Equius has joined the pair of you and that’s okay, now, that’s fine, you’re grateful when he puts a very careful hand on your back and you lean into him, your warm trollblanket who can tie people’s femurs in knots and who occasionally makes really shitty judgments on what to keep from his matesprit, and he holds you both. 

~

You’re not sure where he got this concept that tea is a panacea for all kinds of woes, but he’s pretty sold on it. Kar had choked and snuffled his way down to mostly-calm-but-still-breathing-in-shudders after a while (your shirt will never be the same, goddamnit) and Equius had herded the pair of you into the meal-preparation block and sat you down and put a kettle on, and you had started to explain.

“--so when he said _leviathan_ I wondered, what the fuck could they be thinkin namin their whatever after a dweller in the deeps and, well, dwellers in the deep, you know. Not a gigantic fuckin leap to conclude they want to go after Gl’bgolyb.”

Karkat sniffles, wrapping his hands tighter around the mug. He still can’t get rid of the hitching in his breath but you think he’s not about to start bawling again, or you damn well hope so, you are not good with being wept on. “F-fuck, do they not know about Gl...her whole e-emissary to the horrorterrors thing?”

Equius clears his throat, that low rumble. “I’m afraid that it’s widely regarded in highblood circles as somewhat of a fanciful legend or myth, not to be taken seriously.”

“Goddamn h-highbloods,” Kar says and then chews on his lip, looking up (a long way up) at your matesprit. “Present company excepted.”

“It’s all right. I gather that my association with not only the depraved lower blood castes but also with the hated seadwellers renders me ineligible to be considered a proper blueblood, and at this point I’m okay with it. A lot of things have changed.”

For some reason Kar’s face crumples again at that and his eyes well up. “Fuck,” you say and reach over to pat his back. “No goddamn cryin. We are done with cryin for tonight, okay? What is even the _matter_?”

He scrubs at his eyes with both fists, a wiggler gesture that abruptly reminds you that despite everything you’re still not an adult--that in fact you’ve all got a couple more sweeps to go before you can really be considered out of the wiggler genre yourselves. “It’s...i-it’s fucking stupid,” he says and you can hear the effort to control his voice, to stop it spiraling up into sobs.

“No shit, I got that much.” You keep your hand where it is on his back: fuck, he’s skinny, he’s skinnier than you thought under those bulky sweaters. “Give.”

“It’s y-you,” he says. 

“Me?”

“ _Yes_ , you. I don’t...it’s just...you’ve _changed_ , Eridan.” He takes his hands away from his face and while the red-tinged tears are welling up unchecked he’s still mostly in control. “I mean. All of us have, it’s, t-time does that to you, but you’re _different_ now. You’re older. You’re l-leaving us behind.”

“What complete and utter fuckin rot,” you tell him, and smack the back of his head lightly. “I am now only what, Eq, about point oh two five percent artificial inorganic components. The rest is still the same fuckin douche you have been talkin to on trollian since ever.”

“That’s not what I m-mean and you know it. I just. We. Fuck. Everything s-seems so _pointless_ and juvenile now. Everything we ever did. The world’s gonna end and what do I have to show for my life so far other than an eternity’s worth of panmeltingly embarrassing memories of my past fuckups?”

You groan. “Kar. Listen to me. Can you for just one tiny moment haul your head out a your wastechute long enough to actually hear what someone is layin down your auricular canals? I know it’s difficult, but can you make the fuckin effort?”

“F-f-fuck you,” he manages, and wipes furiously at his face, but he does look like he’s paying attention. 

“Yeah, yeah, fuck me, get in line. I’m gonna make this super simple: the world is definitely gonna end if we don’t do somethin about it, and whether or not we succeed it is astonishin how utterly not helpful dwellin on your own faults is right now. And I dunno if you realize this but you are more than your goddamn faults, Kar. All a us carry that self-destructive horseshit around with us, some more than others, but that ain’t all we are.”

When the _fuck_ did you turn into an after-schoolfeeding-special? 

“I would politely interject that judging your own opinion of yourself to trump everyone else’s, all the time, at all costs, is both illogical and somewhat conceited,” Equius says. “You may think you are a terrible waste of protoplasm and wear out everyone’s patience repeating as much, but other people’s views are, in fact, valid, and may, in fact, be important to consider.”

“What he means is shut the fuck up and listen when your friends say you don’t suck,” you translate helpfully. Kar glares at you, and that is way better than the lost helpless crumpled look he’s been sporting: you can’t help a grin. “And I haven’t changed, get that stupid idea out a your mind right now. I’m just maybe learnin to be less of a pain.”

“Whatever,” Karkat mutters, but as he lifts his hands to wipe at his eyes again you catch an undeniable smile. “ _You_ still suck, Ampora.”

“I suck very fuckin well. More tea?”

Even though you have to thump Karkat on the back while he sorts out which way that last sip of tea ought to go down, the look on his face was worth it. 

“If you’ve quite finished,” Equius sighs, handing Karkat a handkerchief, “maybe we could move on to discussing what exactly it is we can do to prevent our imminent total destruction?”

Karkat splutters at him. “When the hell did you learn sarcasm?”

“He’s got hidden depths,” you point out, and--that time--you deserve the _look_ they both turn on you.


	6. Chapter 6

twinArmageddons (TA) opened memo on board 103 117 101 50 50 32 119 101 32 98 101 116 116 101 114 32 50 97 118 101 32 116 104 101 32 102 117 99 107 105 105 110 103 32 119 111 114 108 100

carcinoGeneticist (CG) joined memo.

centaursTesticle (CT) joined memo.

gallowsCalibrator (GC) joined memo.

arsenicCatnip (AC) joined memo.

caligulasAquarium (CA) joined memo.

cuttlefishCuller (CC) joined memo.

TA: ok kiid2 we have 2iix miinute2 and thiirty 2econd2 2tartiing.... _now_. ampora, you want two tell the cla22 what you've fiigured out?  
CA: ok  
CA: hi evverybody by the wway  
CA: im fine thanks for askin  
CA: so that shit sol intercepted wwhile you guys fucked up their boat  
CA: about levviathan  
CA: theyre talkin about somethin theyre buildin or have built  
CA: wwith the express purpose a attackin fefs lusus  
CA: some kinda wweapon they think is gonna take her out  
CA: sorry fef i knoww its shitty to tell you this wway  
CC: o)( my god -Eridan! are you serious?  
CA: yeah  
CA: accordin to eq  
CA: bluebloods dont take the wwhole horrorterror thing to be fact so much as wwiggler stories  
CA: they also may be underestimatin the sheer size a her  
CA: thing is  
CG: IT ISN'T GOING TO WORK.  
CG: IT'S JUST GOING TO MAKE HER ANGRY.  
CG: NOBODY, INCLUDING US, IS GOING TO LIKE HER WHEN SHE'S ANGRY.  
CC: I can't believe t)(is, w)(y would t)(ey want to )(urt )(er??  
CT: D --> I'm afraid they see her as an impediment to their agenda  
CT: D --> That being the subjugation and eradication of seadwellers  
CT: D --> I believe they take e%ception to the idea that all life on Alternia is subject to the good mood of a giant seadwelling creature  
TA: they'd prefer iit two be 2ubject two the whiim of a bunch of blueblood 2upremacii2t fucktard2, you 2ee.  
CA: theyre not plannin on ovverthrowwin the condesce as such right noww  
CA: just gettin rid a gl'bgolyb all quiet like  
GC: TH4T 1S GO1NG TO B3 F4R FROM QU13T  
CG: ABOUT AS FAR AS POSSIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE FUCKING DESTROYED.  
AC: :33 ...so what do we do??  
TA: we fiind and de2troy theiir doom2day deviice, ii2 what.  
TA: ii'm gettiing clo2er two fiiguriing out where they're located. when we know that, we'll have a better iidea what we're up agaiin2t.  
CA: wwe dont knoww howw much time wwe havve  
CA: sol is doin a bang-up job a hackin their security but apparently these fucks are capable a learnin after all  
CA: they made some changes in their security protocols so its gonna take a little longer to get in than wwe thought  
CA: fef in the meantime can you keep a super close eye on her  
CA: like  
CA: make sure no robot drones or nothin come spyin around  
CC: Of course! -Eridan, I can't tell )(er about t)(is.  
CA: hell no you cant  
CA: not a fuckin wword  
CA: evverythin is just peachy far as shes concerned  
CG: FOR FUCK'S SAKE BE CAREFUL, FEFERI.  
CG: CAPTOR, TEREZI, YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST AT CLANDESTINE GATHERING OF EVIDENCE.  
GC: YOU M34N SPY1NG  
CG: YEAH, THAT.  
CG: FIND OUT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR BLOOD STUDIES' FUNDING SOURCES. DO THEY OWN LAND OR SOMETHING OUT IN THE BOONIES WHERE THEY COULD BE BUILDING A GIANT ILL-ADVISED LASER DEATH RAY OR SOMETHING.  
TA: 2oon a2 ii can get iintwo theiir memo board2 agaiin ii'll know a lot more. 2hould be wiithiin a couple hour2. we're lookiing at gettiing ready for 2ome kiind of attack wiithiin week2 at mo2t.  
CA: wwhatevver they plan to do theyll havve to do it underwwater  
CA: so im going to go seed the likely launch spots wwith eqs sensors  
CA: givve us at least a rough idea a activvity and wwhats goin in and out a the wwater wwhen  
TA: ok that2 iit for tiime  
TA: next memo iin four hour2 and thiirty 2iix 2econd2  
TA: talk 2oon  
arsenicCatnip (AC) left memo.

carcinoGeneticist (CG) left memo.

centaursTesticle (CT) left memo.

caligulasAquarium (CA) left memo.

gallowsCalibrator (GC) left memo.

cuttlefishCuller (CC) left memo.

twinArmageddons (TA) closed memo

~

"I need to modify you," Equius says, coming up behind you and wrapping his arms round your waist. "If you're going in the water for any length of time at considerable depth."

"Mmmm?" God, it's nice to lean back against him, even with your nerves tight and thrumming with the need to _do something_ right now. "Modify me how?"

"This--" he taps your golden horn--"is currently airtight. You get down far enough and it will hurt like blazes pressing against your horn tip. I need to drill some little holes in it to allow for equalization."

"Man, but won't stuff get in there?" You twist around to look up at him. " _Stuff_."

Equius chuckles. "It's possible, but unlikely. I can make the holes look all ornamental, I promise, and I'll put gold mesh in them."

"Will it hurt?"

"No. It will feel odd and vibrate-y." He kisses your forehead: there's been something new in his eyes ever since you shouted at him and Vantas, something less of protection and more of respect. 

"That isn't a word," you grumble, but submit to kisses. "Fine, fine. Modify away."

~

Sollux had found the thing. He'd found the thing and the whole of the thing, and its blueprints, and what it would take to destroy it--and where it now lay on the sea floor awaiting its commanders' input.

None of you knew how long you had before that input was given. 

~

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Frankly, no, but I don't see where there's a fuckton a choice, you know?" You adjust your dive suit, tugging on the weight belts, checking your knife, the things strapped to you. "--It'll be fine. I promise. I'm a seadweller, this is what we _do_."

"But this deep--" he starts and is cut off when you wrap around him and kiss him hard. To their credit none of the others on the boat makes any snide remarks. 

"No more talkin," you say. "If 'twere done when 'tis done, 'twere best it were done fuckin quickly. I demand you make me restorative libations when I get back, okay? This ain't nothin'."

He doesn't look convinced, but you give him a tight squeeze and he goes _hrrk_ and that's enough for now. 

"Sol. Any last words a advice and or comfort?"

"Bite me, bulgelicker," he says, almost fondly. "Nah. You know what to look for and what to do when you get there. You'll do fine."

That's probably the nicest thing Sollux Captor has ever said to you, and you look at him for a moment under your hair. His blank mismatched eyes are impossible to read, but you think maybe he knows the same things you know, and isn't saying them for the same reasons.

Karkat hugs you hard enough to hurt, muttering something you don't really catch, and then Nepeta does the same, throwing herself at you and telling you you are to be careful, goddamnit. 

Then there's just Fef, and you don't know where to look or what to say. She just comes up to you and takes your hands in hers and kisses your knuckles, very lightly, a brush of sea-cold lips. "I love you too," she whispers. 

"I know," you say, and bow very slightly, and then you take your hands back and you straighten your weight belts again and you climb up to the railing and dive. The water closes over you with barely a ripple.

~

Light falls quickly away from you, as you descend. The weights strapped to your waist negate your natural buoyancy and draw you down--more rapidly than you are used to, and you have to swallow hard several times to equalize the pressure in your auriculars. Water all around you, water in you, and as you breathe you can feel the pressure rise.

It takes you an hour to fall.

The light from the surface is gone entirely in ten minutes; your eyes are good in low light, but with no light at all you are as blind as a cave fish. Twenty minutes and you are cold, physically cold, and it tells you that you will not have much time at the bottom before you are too sluggish with the chill to make the effort required to return. Thirty minutes and you are in water so dense and so cold and so deoxygenated that you are breathing in slow ragged gasps, ice swirling inside of you, ice in your salt blood, in your brain. 

Five miles down, you feel something against your feet, and a plume of soft-slimy mud washes past you as you come to rest kneeling on the bottom of the sea, all the way down, as far down as there is down to go: you are on the basement of the world, under this there is just rock and magma and the unimaginable pressure at the heart of your planet.

Thinking is like tying knots in fruitstems with your tongue. You blink uselessly into the darkness. Light has never reached down here: nothing and nobody has ever seen the surface of the seabed where you rest. Moving slowly, making your limbs move, making your fingers grip and twist, you pull one of the cyalume sticks from your belt and snap it, shaking, and wince your eyes shut at the dim green light it leaks. 

In that light your hands look rotten-white, soft and textureless, your claws as pale as your skin. You'd taken off your rings. The little indentations where they rest are visible. The mud under your knees is grey and soft as spider-webs, soft as breath, drifted in strange patterns with the unseen current passing by. Just at the limit of the glowstick's reach a vast smooth hull looms back into the darkness. It's as alien as everything else down here. It could be natural. It isn't.

Wasting time, Ampora.

You reach for the wrist-mounted comm panel on your left arm. Hopefully they don't mind a few typos on the surface: you are not sure you are up to your usual wpm speeds. 

CA: im dowwn  
CA: target in sight  
CA: movvin in

You tuck the glowstick back in your belt, taking off one of the weights, and push yourself off the seabed, a swirl of fine mud particulates drifting up and catching in your gills; you cough reflexively, your whole ribcage creaking under the strain of a thousand times the pressure of sea level. The effort makes black stars float across your vision. You want to lie down in the mud and let it drift over you, let it cover you like a cloak against the weight of water.

Still wasting time.

It is probably the hardest thing you have ever had to do to swim through this black ice-cold denseness to the hull of the object you are here to kill. It hurts all through you, and you are already exhausted: your missing horntip throbs underneath its golden shell, the ice of the water hurting against the barely-healed cut surface. It isn't Fef you're thinking of as you force yourself through the water; it isn't even Equius. It's lines of colored text on a white screen, words you can't remember, can't read, couldn't even if you could see them clearly. Colored text hanging in blankness, a cursor flashing at the end of a command line. You wonder if your trollian logs will still be present in some locked-up vault of ones and zeroes, if anything at all left of you will remain when this job is complete. 

Through the drifting black haze that comes when you breathe too hard you can see the Leviathan's shape, now, you're hanging in the blackness with its vast slow curve underneath you, a blank beast, waiting to be woken to life and death. 

_(Komm in mein Boot  
ein Sturm kommt auf  
und es wird Nacht)_

There is the long sweep of its upper hull, dim through the water, your green glow limning the edge of it as it rears up from the mud. There is the series of ports Sollux told you about: there is the fairing where its maw will open to reveal the murder inside. There is the humped dim shape of the stabilizer fin rising from the hull into the gloom. 

You take a breath of black water, and another, and with all the strength you have left, and all that your friends have given you of theirs, you dive. 

_(Wo willst du hin  
so ganz allein  
treibst du davon)_

You feel your fingers breaking--one, two, three--as you smash into the cover over the submersible's weapon port. You are so cold that the pain barely registers, a little actinic flicker in your consciousness. There are enough left for you to jam your throwaway cutting torch through the gap you have made, and the flare of light and rush of bubbles when you light the beam makes you cry out, your throat thick with the pressure. There is a dull little percussion when you breach the inner protective hull, and a bigger one as the pressure differential rebounds and shudders in the hollow body of the machine. When you drop the torch and pull on the hatch cover it gives easily, and you grab the edges of the hole thus revealed and pull yourself inside.

Claustrophobia sets in immediately. The water in here is foul with thermal grease, beads of flux, anti-corrosion coating sprayed on everything; it burns in your gills, your throat, makes your guts clench in draining nausea. No time for that, you have a job to do, and you push past the hanging conduits and force your way down into the barrel of the weapon itself. Sollux had told you what to look for, and Equius had given you what you needed, but it is you who has to do it, and no one is here to hold your hand. It is as bad as you expected: it is as bad as anything has ever been. You are swallowed by the narrow confines of the barrel, five miles from moonlight, a worm in a tube: it is so tight around you that you can barely reach your arm above your head to set the charges as Equius told you, each shaped little half-sphere of baked-solid explosive focused directly down into the living heart of Leviathan. 

You can barely see now, you can barely feel anything, but you set them in a ring and you push the activators into each and their bright scarlet telltales almost blind you as they come on one after another. You are drowning in red light and chemicals, you are stupid-slow with cold; it takes you a very long time to realize that you have done what you came to do, and you lie curled in the barrel of Leviathan's gun like the worst sort of parasite in a metal gut, and it is only when the activator in your hand starts to flash that you realize you should probably get out of there.

Pulling yourself back out of the barrel takes...longer than you thought.

Outside you wriggle and slither free and slide slowly down the curving hull to land in a puff of mud beside the beast, everything forgotten in the slow idiot struggle to breathe. Your chest aches with effort. Everything hurts. You are so tired and so cold and you want to just curl up in the softness of the sea-floor and close your eyes, wait until the activator counts down to nothing and be done with it, but you have one more thing you have to do. Your fingers are a mess. Typing is a mess.

CA: chargew awt  
CA: charges  
CA: ser  
CA: set  
CA: done

That seems incomplete. You stare through shifting darkness at the keypad.

There was something else.

CA: this wwas alwways one wway ridestub  
CA: had to do it  
CA: der beste Seemann  
CA: wwar doch ich  
CA: eq  
CA: be ok  
CA: for me

There.

You had always known you wouldn't have the strength to come back. No troll was ever meant to go as deep as this. No troll had ever gone this deep and come back. Fef was probably the only one ever to have made it close, and even she had had her limits.

Probably if you had done a better job, if you had handled everything better, you might have gotten your shit done in half the time and made a decent attempt at coming back up to the surface, but even then you know you wouldn't have made it all the way. You hadn't told the others that. It would not have helped.

As it is, well.

Cold has mostly won its battle already. You can't feel your hands or feet. Breathing hurts, but you know it won't hurt for very long: the numbness is spreading up your limbs, and you know dully that when it reaches your heart you will be over. 

You lean back against Leviathan, and wait for the countdown to complete, and for everything to finally be finished with. 

~

You are vast and slow; your bulk encompasses countries, nations. You are the unknown unknowable heart of a world.

Your tiny wrigglertroll is the world herself, and she is slowly coming to know this. She feeds you; she sings to you in her sweet untrained voice in the deep; she wraps herself up in your tentacle-tips and tells you she loves you, she will always love you. 

You know she is wrong about that.

But just recently she has been afraid--more than afraid, terrified, your beautiful bright-burning heiress, her heart has beaten out of time, you can feel it, you can feel the salt tides tugged through her body, the same rich tyrian as your own. She is afraid not for herself but for someone else, and as you let your mind drift out beyond the pure-white monster that is your body you can pick up that fear coming from another--colder, slower, stupider than your Feferi, but a seatroll just the same. He is very small against the great blackness of your world. 

You listen to his heart as it slows. It is saying things, probably things it does not mean to. It is saying, I love you, and I do this for you, and this is the place where I belong, past all hope: it is saying, I tried to save you all.

In your prison of a billion years you are moved, and perhaps only an aeon passes before you decide to do something about it, and your great boneless bulk rises from your resting-place and goes to find Feferi's boy.

He is a tiny mote crumpled against the side of a larger mote, and you flick a tentacle through the water and taste it: ah, a thing designed to hurt and maim and destroy, yes, you have seen these before. He has done something to it. Something that is shortening his time. 

You reach out with another tentacle and lift him off the sea-bed. He is very cold and very limp, and his heart is only saying very small things. The ocean moves through his gills with effort. 

_NO_ , you say, the echoes of your distant masters ringing dimly in your words. 

The shockfront shimmers through the water around you, lifting the hull of the thing and dropping it again, and the boy stirs weakly in your grip. 

_NO. THIS SHALL NOT BE._

Something inside the hull of the destroying-machine spasms and flickers, and you taste bright electronic activity with your tentacle-tips. You are not afraid of what the machine will do, but you know Feferi's boy is far gone already, and will not survive whatever the machine has in store. With a titanic heave you draw in the ocean through your siphon, and clench and press yourself around the water, and the seafloor explodes in a fury of mudstorms as you rise. 

Below you a series of explosions stutters pressure-waves through the water, through your soft body, meeting no resistance; the boy in your grip is less suited to the medium, and violet blood curls from his mouth and nose and gills. You are taking him up far faster than he is designed to go. He will need help if he is to survive the pressure damage, but you know he will have it. 

You can feel Feferi's fright and misery up to the moment when you break the surface; your eyes are far too sensitive to manage the light of the moons, but you come close enough to be able to reach out of the water with your limp burden and place it gently on the deck of the boat bobbing about not two hundred yards away.

The trolls on the boat shout and flail and argue and close over his body in a knot of frantic concern, Feferi among them; then she turns, takes two steps and dives over the rail in the pure controlled beauty that defines her. She is weeping, faint tyrian purple stains in the water drift away as she swims to you and wraps her arms around whatever bit of you she can reach. 

"Mom," she sobs. "Mom. What happened? Are you okay?"

You pet her hair with the delicate tip of a tentacle and sing: yes, you are well, you are well. Something on the sea bottom is in pieces.

"But...it....Eridan, _Eridan_ , what happened?"

You tell her, as far as you know: he was there, he did something to the silly machine, he was too tired and hurt to make his way home; you brought him home.

"The....They..." Feferi buries her face in your whiteness, clinging, and then makes a visible effort and swallows hard. "They wanted to hurt you, Mom."

Did they? you say. 

"That's why Eridan did this, he was, he wanted to destroy their machine thing before it could hurt you and he knew it wouldn't hurt you badly but h-he I mean we knew it w-would make you angry and..."

You curl around her and hold her the way you did when she was very small and unhappy. Hush, you tell her. Hush, my squidlet. No-one will harm either of us.

"But--"

See to your friend. I am tired, dear. I will go back to sleep.

Feferi clings tighter for a moment, sniffling, but she is a queen and she knows that personal is not the same as important, and she just nods, dark hair flaring in great waves around her. "I love you, Mom."

I love you.

You let her go, and sink back into your depths, where the darkness and the pressure surround you with comfort and soothing ease.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks be to rainbowbarnacle and tweedymcgee for betaing!

You wake up slowly, by stages, by levels, and you're already far too close to the surface when you realize just how much being awake fucking _sucks_ right now. 

You hurt all over. Your muscles feel as if every last goddamned one of them has been pulled in violent spasm; your bones ache, the thump of your blood in your ears sends pressure-waves through your pan that must be bulging your eyeballs out with each beat. Your missing horntip throbs with heat.

Your fucking _ears_ hurt. There's a high ringing in your head barely audible over the thump-roar of blood, and a sort of dull numbness that tells you you probably popped your goddamn eardrums. Each breath _aches_. 

The last thing you can remember with any clarity is trying to make your broken fingers behave so you could type something, and then a lot of cold darkness. It is a goddamn mystery how you are not still in the cold darkness, but lying on your back, in air, with light seeping dull violet through your closed eyelids. You didn't come back. You knew you weren't going to come back. 

If you're dead you want to register a fucking complaint with the department of the afterlife, because it is not in the least bit fair to still hurt like blazes when your nerve endings theoretically have given up firing. Someone fucked up here big-time. Someone needs to get fired.

"I can tell you're awake, Ampora," someone says, and you crack open an eye and groan. 

Captor is sitting beside your bed. You're lying inside some sort of...very small cylindrical room. Rivets pimple the walls and a round hatch with a locking wheel forms the end of the cylinder. 

"That was a hell of a dick move you pulled," he says. He's not wearing his stupid anaglyph glasses, and his stupid anaglyph eyes are shadowed dark yellow with what looks like fatigue. "That last text fucking wrecked EQ. And FF, for that matter."

You try to think: what had you written? Something about that song, the best of mariners, it was you. Everything is very much unclear. 

His voice is coming from a long way away, and listening hurts: listening shakes your poor rattled skull. You stare hazily up at him. 

"The fuck were you thinking?" he asks. 

You don't know. 

Tears prickle at your eyes and you close them, turning your head away from Captor: you don't know anything anymore. He makes a sound like an irritated teakettle and he _takes your hand_ \--the one that hasn't got a drip running into it--and your broken fingers hurt but so does everything else, it makes very little difference. "Fuck," he says. "Ampora. _Eridan_. Did you really not plan on coming back?"

You blink back at him. "Had to be done," and oh, fuck, talking hurts too, why are you so not surprised. Your throat feels as if it's been lined with sandpaper.

Captor sighs. "Yeah," he says, after a moment. "Yeah, it did. FF says Gl'bgolyb isn't going to be reducing the lot of us into jelly anytime soon."

You nod a little.

"That was still bullshit, that whole text thing. You know that, right?" 

"Yeah," you say, after a while, eyes shut, focusing on breathing. "Yeah. I was...cold. Not thinkin clearly. Captor. Where am I?"

"I was wondering when you were going to ask that." His voice is tinged with amusement. "You're in a pressure chamber in EQ's hive. You've been out for three nights." _Nightth._ The lisp softens his voice.

"How did I get here?"

"The Emissary to the Horrorterrors herself hauled your obnoxious glutes back to the surface," Captor says, and yeah, that's a bit of glee in there. "Dumped you on the deck like a fucking prize catch."

"I should be dead," you say, looking up at the curving ceiling. "I didn't decompress."

"Yeah, that's what we thought. You were pretty fucked up with the bends and bleeding from your nose and ears, the whole bit, but EQ had apparently thought of that and had brought along a smaller chamber to put you in while we got back to shore. We got you decompressed slowly over the rest of that night and day. You're about fifty meters below sea level now, this chamber's atmosphere is pressurized oxygen. EQ is fucking amazing with a welder."

"Where is he?" you ask, trying to sit up: the wave of pain this causes knocks you flat back down and makes you have to shut your eyes and breathe in careful little sips of air. 

"Easy," Captor says, uncharacteristically gentle. "Don't throw an aneurysm now, we've spent a lot of time and energy putting you back together. He's resting. He refused to leave your side until we knew you were going to make it. Shit was touching as hell."

"...Why are _you_ here?"

"Someone had to be. You do know this whole thing was fucking crazy, right?"

"Sometimes crazy works," you say, suddenly so tired, so tired you can barely form the words. "What about the bluebloods?"

"They've been uncharacteristically quiet these past few days. Possibly because that rascal terribleAspects happened to accidentally port all their private correspondence to the imperial ministry of homeland security. Whoops, looks like someone's getting a visit from the drones." Captor snaps his fingers. "Bang goes that operation."

You can't help smiling, although your face aches. "You're a complete nooksucker, Captor."

"And you're an utter shitpanned lunatic bulgeknot. Go back to sleep, Ampora."

You don't actually have a choice. 

~

The next time you wake up you're out of the chamber and in your recuperacoon, and Equius is sitting beside you, heavily asleep. He's got a few new scars on his hands and arms that look like weld-spatter, and his hair is escaping from its tie and falling in black silk over his face, moving slightly with the faint rhythm of his breathing. 

You watch him. You can't help thinking of sitting by a different recuperacoon, months ago, on the _Dualscar_ , watching him toss feverishly and talk to people who weren't there; you can't help thinking of all the times you have watched over one another since you brought him to your shiphive. You can't, in fact, help thinking of how vastly different your life is now to what it was this time last sweep. 

Your broken fingers are healing. The ringing in your ears has faded; the exhausting pain in every muscle from the decompression sickness and the hypothermia is beginning to loosen its grip. You know it will take many nights to go away completely, but you're also aware you are monstrously and unworthily lucky not to be crippled for life, or dead, the way you had mostly expected to be. Leaning your elbows on the edge of the cupe, you watch Equius sleep, and feel the tides of your own blood drawn through your body in their endless, restless rhythm. Gl'bgolyb had saved you. You were supposed to have saved the world from Gl'bgolyb's voice, and instead she had found you and brought you home, and now you are not at all sure what you are meant to do. 

You are very much not the troll you were when you saw him fall out of his horrible little boat. Like you'd said to Kar: that troll is gone, dead or lost or missing, it makes no never mind; all you are is a collection of purple moving parts and feelings, no longer certain of your place in the world or your weight on the skin of it. You had touched the bottom of the sea and somehow it feels as if you've brought some of it back with you, that soft eternal greyness that no other living eyes have ever seen. Part of you _had_ died, there; part of you was still half-buried in the silt, for all time part of the crushing ice-cold blackness of the deep. 

You think probably it's a good thing, really. You feel lighter than you have in sweeps, despite the pain, despite the conversation you are going to have to have with Equius when he wakes up, despite those fresh scars on his arms and the way your whole skeleton feels like rusty rebar. Maybe the part of you that's still on the sea floor by the ruins of Leviathan is that part that wanted to kill all landdwellers and make Fef your matesprit against her will and demand attention, always attention, all the attention, even if it was negative. 

Maybe all that's left behind is you, now. 

He shifts a little in his sleep, and you can see he's broken a lot more teeth just recently; there are the little nicks and cuts in his lower lip that mean he's been under strain. His brows draw together a little, and his eyelashes tremble, and he slowly opens his eyes, and sees you, and sees you watching him. 

The next thing you know he's surged off the chair and hauled you bodily out of the recuperacoon, sending slime everywhere, and is shaking you violently. Christ but he's strong, he's _strong_ and he's _fast_ , you forget that, you always forget that. You yelp, because it hurts and you're sore all over and your head rings with each shake and also because of the goddamn intensity of him, and then he's not shaking you anymore, he's holding you so tight you creak alarmingly and wow that's hard to breathe. 

"I thought you were _dead_ , you idiot," he says into your hair. "I thought _you were fucking dead_."

"Mmf," you point out.

"You sent us a message saying you weren't coming _back_."

"Mmf." It'd be swell if he'd ease off a little, you could use some breathing action up in this, but you can feel him shaking against you, and you feel the dampness of his tears in your hair. 

"Do you know what that _did_. To Feferi. And me."

"Mmf?"

"You saved what passed for my life some time back, Eridan Ampora, and since then it has been something to appreciate rather than endure, because you were in it, but on its own it's still a wee small thing and _do not you dare leave me here alone._ I don't love myself half near enough to make up for you not being around to do it for me, and I...I can't _fucking bear it_ \--"

He trails off and oh jesus fuck, Equius Zahhak is fucking _weeping_. You wriggle, and he finally gets the message and eases off on the pressure, and you can breathe again, and you just hold him. Through the tears his voice sounds absolutely bizarre, cracking and splintered and so unlike the steady baritone you know that it reaches into your battered heart and twists. 

"Eq," you're saying, stroking his hair over and over. "Eq. Equius. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, love, I'm so sorry, I didn't...mean to leave you like that, it was....fuck, it was stupid, I just...couldn't see another way..."

"Another way?" he demands. "You just thought randomly sacrificing yours-self for the g-good of the planet was the only logical solution and then didn't even tell anyone about it?"

"I think Captor guessed?"

" _Fuck_ Captor," Equius says, and you feel cold shock drip down your spine. You...really did almost break him, didn't you. You break a lot of things you touch. "You were really going to leave me like that, without a word of warning?"

"You wouldn't a let me go."

"Of course I wouldn't have let you go! I would have...have...done _something_. Built a robot. Built a submarine and done the job myself, Eridan, _nothing_ matters if it means losing you. What would it be worth to gain the world if you weren't _in it_ , am I getting through to you, do you have even the slightest idea how much you frightened all of us..."

"I'm beginnin to," you say quietly, and you go on stroking his hair. "Equius, listen, just listen for a minute. What I did was...stupid, you're right, you're always right, it's a thing about you, but...listen, I think I needed to do it anyway."

He unwinds himself from you and looks you in the face: he's a _mess_ , blotchy blue and grey and damp with tears and sweat. 

"All my life, right, I've been a fuckup. First I was a genocidal fuckup with a chip on my shoulder the size of the _Dualscar_ about shit that was too stupid even to comprehend; then I was a manipulative emotionally stunted fuckup followin Fef around like a goddamn barkbeast and widdlin on the metaphorical rug the whole time for attention; then you happened and I was a fuckup with a reason to try not to fuck up further."

He makes an unhappy little noise, the tears still brimming over as he looks down at you. 

"But I was still the fuckup, Eq. Then when they pulled that shit with the kidnappin and the mutilation and gore and similar I guess I kinda woke up a little. Grew up, even." God, you hurt all over, and you are so _tired_. "You came and rescued me and saved my life. You and the others. Our friends. And then when I figured out what the bluebloods were plannin on doin and realized what the fuck was needed to stop them there was only ever one option in my head."

"You planned this all along?" He sounds like you've fucking gutted him. 

"Not planned so much as knew what I was gonna do. And then I was there on the bottom a the goddamn ocean in the dark and the cold and the deep and more alone than I ever was in my life, but for once in my life I was doin somethin that fuckin mattered. Somethin I could do and nobody else could. Somethin that wasn't poncin about havin really good hair and the stylingest fuckin wardrobe any troll could ask for. I was a real live boy, Eq. Do you get that?"

He stares at you, and slowly raises a massive hand to wipe tears and snot from his face. "You really thought that you weren't...what, valid, before that?"

"Well, think about it. What had I ever done, other than haul you out a the water, that was really useful? --Wait, no, sometimes I made dinner. And I taught you about product. But for the most part you gotta acknowledge I was not one a the world's most useful fuckin trolls."

"Eridan," he says, but you shake your head: you're not sure how much strength you have left and you need to finish this now that you've begun. 

"Yeah, I knew at the time that it was a stupid fuckin gesture but it was also gonna get rid of a very real threat, and...the fuckup in me wanted out, okay? So I set this whole thing up. You made the charges after Captor found the information. I dove to the bottom of the goddamn world and I set the charges and then I couldn't come back, and I said so, and that woulda been it if not for Gl'bgolyb. Who didn't seem all that interested in the Leviathan at all, accordin to Fef, I gather. Why'd she save me? Not for my sake, fuck knows. No, she decided the story was gonna end in a different way, for whatever unknowable horrorterror reason, and she brought me back to you."

"You _could have said goodbye_ ," Equius says, half-choked with tears.

"Wouldn't a had the guts to do it. I'm a coward, Eq. Always have been. But listen. When I was down there in the dark by myself I was the fuckup and I was the real boy at the same time, and...I think the fuckup finally got left behind down there. I'm done pretendin. I'm done swannin about and tryin desperately to prove somethin to myself or the fuckin world. I'm done with that for good. I'm done, love, and I've been to death and back and there is nothin under the twin moons I want more than to be alive and be with you."

Your own voice has begun to scale up to cracking range, now, your throat thick with the threat of tears. 

"You are the end a every road, okay, Eq? You're the destination a all the voyages. There is nothin now that can take me away from you, you are all a the answers to all my questions, just...just don't look at me like that, I can't fuckin bear it, will you forgive me? Can you forgive me?"

He just stares at you, those blue tears brimming and brimming, his eyes shadow-mottled blue and grey, too old in his young face. You can feel the ocean's cold again creeping up your limbs to slow your heart, because you have finally ruined the one good thing you have ever had, you have stopped the only clock that ever told your time, you have come back to breath for nothing at all, nothing is left, and then silently he reaches out and takes your hands in his, dwarfing them. The livid scars of recent burns stand out: you wince. 

"Will you swear to me," he says, in that wavery cracked un-Equiuslike voice, "will you swear on the voice of Gl'bgolyb Herself that you will never again leave me like that."

"That I can," you say, and your own voice cracks and you're crying in earnest, "and that I will."

He opens his arms to you, and you fall into them, and at last after every goddamn twist and turn and misstep and mistake in your whole fucking _life_ , you have come home. 

~

You move that whole night in the shelter of his arm: he won't let go of you, as if you'll vanish like a ghost the moment you're no longer in contact. You still hurt, but now you don't mind that, you know it won't last and that you are finally yourself and where you need to be.

The others are here. Kar, Nep, Captor, Fef. You talk about stupid shit that doesn't matter; hell, you all end up draped over one another, tired and limp and idiotically happy about the fact that you're not going to die. The whole group of you have grown up a lot over the past perigee. It shows in the way you talk to one another, lobbing friendly insults like lofted shuttlecocks. Kar and Nep finish each other's sentences. Nep and Equius talk in that weird half-spoken language of moirails who barely need to enunciate to get their point across. Fef had hugged you until you winced and told you you were a goddamned idiot and far luckier than you deserved and if you ever, ever did anything that stupid ever again she was going to feed you to a sharkbeast by hand, and you believed her, and then she'd cried a little and you had too, and it had been okay suddenly, okay without that constant dull yearning that'd sickened you every time you saw her. 

And Captor. Captor is taller than you remember, tired, a gantry, a beanpole of a troll, the blue-and-red bracelet knotted around one wrist faded with time and wear, but he holds Fef like the jewel she is and he looks at you with inexplicable expression in those blank blue-scarlet eyes. 

"Welcome back, douchelord," he says, and then just as inexplicably you're holding one another in an awkward skinny bone-angled hug, and he touches your back so gently you can't even believe it. "You don't get to pull this shit again, got that? I nearly burned my brains out hauling the damn boat back to shore for your sake."

"Thanks," you say, almost too quietly to hear, your face socked against his bony shoulder. "Thanks, Sol."

"You're fuckin welcome. And you're still an asshole."

"So are you." It's...oh, god, had he really, had he really done that for you, pushed the boat and everyone on it back with his psionics, that must have taken a fuckton out of him, and...

"I hope," he says, quietly, still hugging you, "that you don't secretly want to be my kismesis."

"I don't."

"Good." You can feel the others watching you, and for some reason you don't mind. "Because I'm having all these thoroughly inexplicable pale feelings all of a sudden, you complete nookstain."

"Oh thank fuck," you say. "Would a been hells a awkward if I was the only one."

Someone else's arms come around you: Fef, cool and slender and strong. Then Kar, almost fever-hot by comparison, awkward and determined and so gentle despite himself, and Nep, bouncy and clinging and burbling to herself, and finally Equius, whose arms are almost big enough to hold the whole tangled knot of you. 

~

Later, much later, you stare at the white screen of your husktop. Unlike the vision you'd seen five miles down, there are no colored pesterlogs scrolling across that white: it's white and white alone, waiting for words to bloom into being on it. Waiting for a story to be told. 

You haven't written anything since your shitty poems to Fef, back ages ago, but you have had all these fucking words knotted up in your pan all night, and you think you might burst if some of them don't get out and fill up something else, such as a document. 

You preface it with a line from an old, old sea-shanty, because it's been on your mind of late as well:

_...there's a blue light burning out at sea..._

There wwas once a fisher-prince, a sea-troll, wwho livved in a wwrecked shiphive on a lonely island, wwho dreamed a one day findin friends to lovve him, for he wwas broken, and he didn't knoww howw to lovve wwithout demandin and takin from others like a scavvenger. This prince dreamed a golden towwers and vvast palaces alivve and brilliant wwith livvin creatures, but he wwoke each night to an empty room and a silent hivve except for the sloww crash and murmur a the sea.

"Wwhat havve I done," he asked the moons one night wwhen they wwere especially bright, "wwhat havve I done, that I should hurt evverythin I touch?" And the moons wwere feelin kind that night, as they sometimes wwere, and they spoke to the prince, sayin

"You wwere hatched missin part a yourself, fisher-prince. Until you find that part you wwill nevver be happy, nevver be done. You wwill alwways wwant more than you can havve, and it wwill make you miserable."

So the prince asked the moons: "Howw can I find this missin piece?"

And the moons answwered: "Wwe cannot tell you. You must go searchin for it yourself, but you wwill knoww it wwhen you find it."

"Is it on land or out at sea?" the prince asked.

"Wwe cannot say."

"Wwill you tell me if I find it, in the future?"

"Wwe cannot say," and the moons began to fade, like they alwways do, as dawwn approached.

"Wwait," he called. "Please. Tell me wwhere to start."

The moons did not reply in wwords but in song, an old song, swweet and sad and self-awware:

_Komm in mein Boot  
ein Sturm kommt auf  
und es wwird Nacht_

_Wwo wwillst du hin  
so ganz allein  
treibst du davvon_

_Wwer hält deine Hand  
wwenn es dich  
nach unten zieht_

_Wwo wwillst du hin  
so uferlos  
die kalte See_

The prince listened to the last notes as they fell in the beginnin a the dawwnlight, and he took their meanin dowwn to his recuperacoon wwith him. 

_Come in my boat  
a storm is risin  
and night falls_

_Wwhere do you want to go  
so completely alone  
you are driftin awway_

_Wwho will hold your hand  
wwhen it pulls  
you under_

_Wwhere do you wwant to go  
so boundless  
the cold sea_

The prince fell asleep dreamin a cold wwaves and taut sails, and in the evvenin wwhen he wwoke he kneww wwhat he wwould do.


End file.
